Factory workers in China who cut and print cards for a politically incorrect but popular card game got a week-long paid vacation this month as part of a holiday season publicity campaign launched by the game's US makers, according to reports. 

Issuing a statement that said, "... we've always viewed the way our stuff is made as part of who we are," the company behind the American card game Cards Against Humanity have given workers who manufacture their cards in China a paid one-week vacation this December.

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The statement -- which was posted in the company's website -- said many US companies distance themselves from their workforces in China, presumably because of domestic consumer concerns, "and as a result Americans often don't see the labour that goes into the things they buy."

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reports that since the factory in China did not have adequate policies for paid vacations for employees, Cards Against Humanity purchased 100 percent of its capacity and paid the workers to do nothing for a week.

The company said it used revenues raised from a holiday promotion called "Eight Sensible Gifts for Hannukah" -- in which 150,000 consumers paid to receive one mystery gift each day -- to pay for the workers' week-long vacation.

Many factory workers in China are migrant workers who have left their often rural hometowns to find work in the city.  Because work schedules in China are guided by strict national policies, many workers are only able to come home during the week-long national holiday for the lunar New Year, says Foreign Policy Magazine. 

Earlier this month, Cards Against Humanity sent its subscribers a mailer containing thank you notes from the factory workers and photos from the vacations they enjoyed.  

Zhou Jian, a warehouse manager, said he took his wife to see some of China's spectacular sceneries. 

"During my holiday, my wife and I travelled to Yang Zhou to see the beautiful mountains and scenery of the southern Yangtze River," Zhou said in a letter posted on the Cards Against Humanity website.

 Another factory worker, Xu Zhengping, said he went fishing with a friend. 

"On my vacation I drove with my friend to the river to fish," writes Xu. "When we got home my wife cooked the fish for our whole family, it was pretty awesome!"

Cutting workshop manager Zhang Ercheng reports that he went home to celebrate his dauther's sixth birthday.

"My family got together and ate, it was really great," Zhang wrote in his note, adding that Cards Against Humanity could probably compare to the Chinese game Three Kingdom Murder.

While none of the photos and letters could be independently verified, observers have noted that the campaign appears to be an effort to downplay US consumer concerns about American jobs moving abroad.     

The US Department of Labor estimates that five-percent of the American workforce was unemployed as of November this year.  Some of the biggest names in corporate America -- General Electric and Daimler-Chrysler, among them -- have meanwhile moved thousands of jobs to China and other countries because of prohibitive labor costs and unfavorable tax and credit laws back home.

The Cards Against Humanity game -- which its US makers have described as "a party game for horrible people" -- consists of two decks of cards: a black set containing questions, and a white set containing answers.

Each round sees a player offer a card from the black deck with a question such as, "What are my parents hiding from me?"  The other players then offer the funniest answers from their white decks, like, "Harry Potter erotica" or "Dick Cheney".  The funniest answer wins the round.

The game is not sold in China. 

Tagsfactory, factory workers, US unemployment, Holiday season